Friday, October 05, 2007

Friday Late Night Round-Up

Readers: The Guru is going to be traveling extensively over the next two weeks, keeping me from posting every day. Please treat every post as a wide open thread, and offer links to any stories I might miss! And please contribute via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page.

Colorado: A new poll puts the Colorado race in a statistical dead heat, with Congressman Mark Udall leading former Rep. Bob Schaffer 36-35. The percentage of undecided voters seems rather high, but it is worth noting that even this close poll also finds that Udall has almost double the support of Schaffer among independent voters, 34-19. Further, Udall raised in Q3 over a million dollars and has over $3 million on hand. No word yet on Schaffer's take.

Idaho: Larry Craig is resolute on finishing the rest of his term. Can we expect GOP Lt. Gov. Jim Risch to enter the 2008 Senate race next week? I have a theory that we can, for now, label as "whacky until it actually happens." It goes like this: expecting an open seat, a few Idaho Republicans enter the 2008 Senate GOP primary, fracturing support among the candidates. (So far, this is not too implausible given that a number of Republicans interviewed with Gov. Butch Otter when it looked like there would be an appointment.) With support fractured amid the Republican primary combatants, Craig recognizes that the diminished support he has among the ID-GOP is still strong enough to win a (relatively) widely contested primary. So Craig runs for re-election. Whacky? Maybe. Impossible? Hardly.

Idaho & Alaska: Incompetent NRSC Chairman John Ensign commented on Larry Craig's decision to serve out the remainder of his term rather than resign as he originally suggested it was his intention to do:

He gave us his word that he would do something. He's backing out on us, and I don't think it is the right thing to do.

So Ensign says that when a Senator suggests that he will resign, he ought to follow through, huh? Because I distinctly remember one Ted Stevens threatening to quit the Senate if his precious ANWR drilling bill didn't get passed (which it didn't). In fact, he's threatened to quit time and time again. I wonder if Ensign has any comment on that.

Minnesota & New Hampshire: Norm Coleman and John Sununu happily take dirty money. Now, I agree that a campaign can't scrutinize over and research the background of every contributor; but when you see "VECO" as an employer, given everything going on in Alaska, it should be a major red flag. (HT: MN Blue)

Kentucky: Mitch McConnell raised $1.55 million in Q3, bringing his cash on hand to $6.8 million. Nevertheless, all the money in the world won't put Mitch on the correct side of the issues.

34 Comments:

Senate Guru: Consistently great coverage. Are you in the NY area? If so, the folks at www.generationbluepac.com would love to talk to you about how we can work together to help Democrats expand their majority in 2008.

I am a Democrat living in KY. McConnell will be hard to beat. He raises huge sums of cash and, although 55% of Kentuckians have not liked him on Iraq that has not translated (yet) to overall dissatisfaction. To Ditch Mitch, we need a strong Dem candidate to ANNOUNCE and not just toy with the idea of running. We can Ditch Mitch--but we will need a strong candidate and strong DNC and netroots support.

Kos diaried something EXTREMELY funny. Read the diary, but the jist is, Republicans are trying to tie MoveOn to Tom Allen, they take a screenshot of the website, and blur ALL THE TEXT except "MoveOn.org" and "Donate to Tom Allen". It really is a funny new low. It makes me more confident of our chances in Maine, knowing how ridiculously scared they must be to sink to such deceptive tactics. If they thought they could win on a pro-war platform with one of the most popular US Senators in the US, they wouldn't be doing this.

Taniel beat me to the post on Warner... those are massive leads (I love 30 point leads)... we have to take this news with guarded optimism, however... there is an entirely new populuation in Northern Virginia that did not know about the fiscal destruction that Gilmore caused to the budget of the State of Virginia and he may try to hide his record... same arguement applies to Tom Davis on the federal level and his record of supporting massive deficit spending.

1. Come on newred. You could at least be up front about it and note that it could be an outlier. It was one poll, with a 20% swing over the span of a couple months. You'd need at LEAST another poll before you can say he's crashing. Seriously.

2. Noted on MyDD, Friends for Mark Warner have raised $1,109,080 between 9/13-9/30 for his senate campaign.

JeremiahTheMessiah - You are correct. One INDEPENDENT poll doesn't mean a crash, though I guess you also should have mentioned that the August 56% approval was from a Reid internal poll conducted by a Democratic pollster, which they didn't even bother releasing to the public, even to counter his basement level national polls. I guess the next poll will indicate which numbers are closer to the truth.

Newred - I'm referencing your article, what the hell are you referencing? There is nothing in there saying the other poll THEY are referencing is from Reid's camp. So don't call me dishonest, or say I should mention things that aren't in the article we are talking about. Please. Is there an article you would like to add to the discussion with more information on this subject?

If not, let's review.

"Molly Ball of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Senator Harry Reid's favorable rating in Nevada has "plunged dramatically," according to a new poll. Currently, Reid's favorable rating is at 32%, while his unfavorable rating is at 51%, a net 23-point drop from the last poll taken in early May when Reid scored a 46/42 favorable/unfavorable rating."

As far as I can tell, the 46/42 rating that I referenced, because again, we are talking about the article, YOU POSTED, is from the same INDEPENDANT group. There is no information there implying otherwise. Quit it.

JeremiahTheMessiah - My mistake. I thought when you wrote "over the span of a couple months" you were referring to the two month old poll cited by the article in the Molly Ball link that is in the crash article. Molly Ball wrote, "Reid's staff provided an internal poll conducted for Reid by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman in early August, which was not made public at the time because it was intended as an internal barometer. That poll of 600 voters statewide had 56 percent approving of Reid, 40 percent disapproving." I didn't realize you meant the poll cited in the "crash" article that is four months old. My apologies for the confusion.

If I ever reference something else, I post a link. A tipoff as to which I'm referring to though, if you ignore the first sentence, is that I'm pretty close math wise.

I said 20% swing. I was in the ballpark of 20 something.

New Poll32/51Reid Poll56/40Old Poll46/42

The swing between the new poll and the old poll is 14/9 points swing. AKA 23% total swing. The swing between the old poll and Reid's poll is 24/11 swing. AKA 35%. That would be a big tipoff. You could guess, since I said 20% swing that it was probably the older poll, based on the fact that I wouldn't be almost 50% off on something like this.

My personal take is that I would put Texas or Kentucky ahead of Nebraska, unless Bob Kerrey gets in. (Texas being competitive if Mikal Watts gets in. In Pennsylvania we saw rural voters who are economically Democrats, but are won by Republicans on social issues play a key role. Santorum lost by 18 points. How much of a swing would we have if we ran a Pro-Life self funding Democrat in Texas against one of the weakest senate incumbents from there in the longest time?)

For the record, I don't think VA Blogger is Newred. They have common opinions, but their writing styles differ.

Getting back to the topic of senate races . . . Bobby Jindal won the gubernatorial race in Louisiana yesterday, which means he won't be running against Mary Landrieu next year. I had a feeling Jindal would win, and the fact that he's out of the way is actually somewhat good news for us, as he would've posed an insurmountable challenge to Landrieu.

Don't get me wrong; Landrieu will still have an uphill battle on her hands. But it'll be a little less tough without Jindal.